Meeting The Organizational Security Needs Of Tomorrow

Published: 5 Apr 2011

Enterprise Evolution and Its Impact on IT

In the past several years, the work processes and dynamics in most enterprises have changed dramatically. The new age of social media and network communication software has added an additional working tool that is increasingly being adopted by enterprise employees. Software and web solutions, like Instant Messaging, LinkedIn, FaceBook and others, have the potential to help employees better connect with co-workers, partners and clients. As well, these tools enable a faster and more focused work process for some roles within the organization. This change in the enterprise environment is now referred to as Enterprise 2.0. However, do these solutions have a negative effect on the enterprise in addition to time consumption? And, if so, are the negative effects manageable or is there a need for limiting the use of such solutions?

In this whitepaper we will address the need for software solutions that monitor software and web solutions the context of threats that can utilize these solutions as a way to infiltrate the enterprise.

The Security Concerns Following the Change in Enterprise IT

While there is no doubt that many of the communication and social software solutions made the enterprise working environment much more interactive and efficient, there are some negative effects to the use of these solutions, most of which have nothing to do with the user and everything to do with next generation malware attacks.

Malware is programmed by hackers who are always looking for ways to infiltrate different networks. Their main goals are to either disable or cripple the infected network, or steal digital information that can be used for financial gain. In the early network days, most of the malware were aimed at the lower level network protocols as that is where they were the most vulnerable and the most easy to exploit. Security vendors started offering solutions that would know how to look at data packets going in and out of the organizational network, making sure that no malware was penetrating the network. In recent years, hackers followed the trend of web based applications used by employees and started to create malware that hide in the applications and are therefore not detected by regular layer 2-4 malware detectors. When security vendors noticed the new hacker trend they tried to apply their solution to the application layer, only to find that in order to inspect the application layer in a cost effective manner there needed to be a new approach to this issue.